Will Palm Springs follow other valley cities to restrict short term rentals?

With all of these recent changes on short term vacation rentals across the valley. Palm Springs residents want to know if their city will follow. 

News Channel 3’s Dani Romero spoke to residents and the city to find out. 

“I have mixed feelings about it," said Stevin Henderson. " I understand the need for it as far as tourism in the area, especially in Palm Springs, but I also feel that on the other hand, some of it has gotten out of hand.” 

Part-time resident, Stevin Henderson has seen  visitors vacationing in his gated community abuse the rules. 

“They've come out and kind of treating the whole place like Las Vegas and I wouldn't say its disrespectful, but kind of loud and buoyant and rarely only thinking of themselves.” 

Full-time homeowner, Mike Hammond said there needs to be more of a crackdown. 

“I think there need to be a moratorium on them andI think there needs to be a referendum again on them," said Mike Hammond. "I think down valley cities have some of them have totally banned them and I think Palm Springs needs to look at that issue again.” 

And he’s right, Palm Desert, La Quinta, Cathedral City and now Rancho Mirage are moving to ban or restrict short term rentals and Indio is looking to make revisions in the future. We asked Palm Springs what their plan is. 

“There's nothing formal that's planned for the city council at this point," said David Ready, City Manager of Palm Springs. "Now that could change in the future if the situation changes, but right now we're just handling these issues administratively.” 

In the past 10 months ,the city has approved 21 new vacation rental permits. 

“I think its a sign of the health of this community and the health of the economy ironically that people still want to travel,"said Corinne Kerr.

City manager David Ready said there are more than two thousand short term rentals and that number fluctuates every year. But in accordance to that they have ramped up their enforcement. 

"Over the last month, we've seen our complaints come down significantly to where they were a year ago and what we would expect in there actually in October," said Ready. "We only had 12 calls to the hotline so last year, 2019, we actually had 77 calls to the hotline in October.” 

Here are some of the statistics that the city of Palm Springs sees:

Week Ending 09/03/20               10 New Applications; 3 Closures

Week Ending 09/10/20                13 New Applications; 11 Closures

Week Ending 10/01/20                11 New Applications; 10 Closures